LSU eager to defeat North Texas and head into Christmas break on six-game winning streak

BATON ROUGE -- With LSU coming off its biggest home win in Coach Trent Johnson's tenure and Christmas break right around the corner, it's only natural to assume the Tigers are prime candidates for a letdown on the road against North Texas tonight.

Bill Feig / The Associated PressRalston Turner scored a season-high 22 points to help the Tigers upset Marquette on Monday.

But LSU (8-3) has already been on that side this season, and players insist they're finished overlooking opponents.

LSU, which defeated No. 10 Marquette 67-59 on Monday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, will try to extend its five-game winning streak in Denton, Texas, at the North Texas Coliseum tonight at 7 p.m. against the Mean Green, which is 6-5 and just starting to work its best player into the lineup.

"It's extremely important," said senior forward Storm Warren about treating every team the same. "That's one of the things we talked about (after the Marquette game). Marquette was a big win for us ... but we have to be ready to push that in the past. North Texas came out here last year and executed pretty well against us."

North Texas did more than execute pretty well against the Tigers last season. The Mean Green outshot, outpaced and outhustled the Tigers en route to a 20-point victory in Baton Rouge.

LSU, which was 7-4 before it lost 75-55 to North Texas last season, entered a prolonged funk after the blowout loss, going 4-16 the rest of the season.

Although this season's North Texas team is much different than the senior-laden team that beat LSU by 20, the Tigers have to figure out how to contain freshman forward Tony Mitchell, who just recently became eligible.

Mitchell committed to play for Missouri, but was ruled as an academic partial qualifier and instead went to North Texas, which allows partial qualifiers to enroll.

Although he has only been able to play in two games -- Mitchell's eligibility date was Dec. 18 -- his impact has been noticeable.

"You know where he's going to be," Johnson said of Mitchell. "He's going to be dunking everything. ... Only a handful of guys in the country have a motor like he does. He's going to be active around the rim or be above it if you don't put a body on him."

Mitchell, 6 feet 8 and a Dallas native who played on the U.S. 19-and-younger team in Latvia this summer, has scored 24 points and grabbed 18 rebounds in 42 minutes this season.

"As coaches, you look at guys who can have an impact at an elite level," Johnson said. "There's two of them on our schedule, and he's one of them."

The Tigers' strategy when playing against some of college basketball's more explosive players? To be cohesive and play as one on defense.

"It is a collective group effort," sophomore guard Ralston Turner said. "As a group, we always talk about team defense, and that's what we work on. Basketball is a team sport."

The effort has shown in LSU's five-game winning streak, during which opponents averaged a paltry 54.2 points per game. Every opponent during the winning streak was held to fewer than 60 points.

"Defense is what's going to take us through and take us down the stretch," Warren said.

Although the suffocating defense being played by the Tigers has keyed their recent winning ways, Turner finding his shooting stroke definitely has helped.

Turner scored a season-high 22 points against Marquette, as he seemingly couldn't miss from deep late in the game.

The Alabama native made four of five 3-point attempts in the win.

After a promising freshman season, Turner struggled early this season with his touch. Before the Marquette game, when he hit six of 10 attempts, Turner was shooting just better than 30 percent this season.

"I never lost my confidence," he said. "The shots in the past that I took, they were in rhythm, and they were good shots. (Against Marquette), I didn't do anything different."